ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH
There now began for me an interesting experience. I had started out to
travel and see the sights of Europe, a bride of twenty-two, with a mind
in some ways older than my age, as inquisitive as youth, but, perhaps,
not so subject to youth’s self-deception; as interested as youth in my
own observations (rather than in any general view or philosophical
explanation of society), but sceptical, and with no youthful tendency to
illusions either romantic or royal. The European travels of such a young
lady could not have much interest, ordinarily. But, for ten years and
more, I went from Court to Court, rather than from country to country,
in that huge family of Royalty whose members have been intermarrying for
so many generations that all the occupants of the thrones of Europe have
become cousins, and a princess can visit from palace to palace as if
from house to house among relatives in a countryside. And it was an
interesting experience, I say, because Royalty is not of semi-sacred
caste that in one country will be accepted as quite holy and God-given,
and in another will be merely allowed to live pensioned--like vergers in
some fine old cathedral after its worship has been abolished and its
altars removed--and in yet others will be existing in all the
intermediate stages between these two extremes; honoured by this faction
and attacked by that, reformed and reconstructed and embellished and
defaced.
It was interesting, as it had been in Spain, to discover the anomalies
and false appearances and thin lava-crusts on which we seemed to live so
securely. Being well aware of how I saw myself in my own mind, it was
interesting to study what was in the minds of other royal personages--to
see how they regarded themselves and how they thought they were
regarded--and to learn what real credit we had and what actual
appearance we made in the minds of the people who saluted us with such
varying degrees of curiosity and respect.
In Paris, where we went first, Royalty has no problems. Being for ever
dispossessed of its claims in France, it is accepted there without awe
and without enmity. It flees to Paris from the dulness of its official
life in every monarchy of Europe; and at times it seems that more
royalties are there than in all the other capitals of the Continent
together. Paris has become a holiday rendezvous for them; and it needs
them as little as it does its tourists. They can meet and dine and
gossip, unobserved even by the Press. They can find circles of
aristocracy in which they will be received as formally as they would be
in their Courts. Or they may enjoy, if they can, on terms of some human
naturalness, the life of salons and studios. And if they desire the
crowded solitude of the streets, they will rarely find any one to stare.
Paris is freedom, even for princesses. It was, for me, on that first
return, an old home of childhood that I was revisiting; and I went to
the convent to see the nuns who had taught me, and hunted up some of my
playmates to recall myself to them after the nine years that seemed a
lifetime that had passed. Then, in a week, we set out for England; and
there we were Royalty again.
It was then I first saw Queen Victoria, and I shall not easily describe
what a surprise it was. She had been for a long time the great Queen in
my thoughts, on the throne of an empire beyond imagination in
[Illustration: DOWAGER QUEEN ALEXANDRA OF ENGLAND, QUEEN MAUD OF NORWAY
AND PRINCE OLAF, CROWN PRINCE OF NORWAY]
wealth and power, and ruling so many millions of the most civilised
people devoted in their loyalty. I had formed a mental picture of I do
not know what majesty and grandeur for her. We came to her from the City
of London (so impressive after Paris) to have luncheon with her in
Windsor Castle, that is so noble a seat of sovereignty; and when I
entered the room in which she waited to receive us, I had a shock of
pity and dismay. She was so small that I thought at first she must be
sitting down. And she was not only feeble with age, but evidently ill,
her eyes dulled, her hands swollen, her face as if feverish. Her merely
human aspect of infirmity was increased by the black dress of mourning
and widow’s cap that she wore; and standing with her two Indian servants
behind her, leaning on her short cane, in that magnificent apartment
that would have dwarfed a giant, holding out a tired hand to you vaguely
as if she did not clearly see you--it brought a lump to the throat. Here
was Royalty then! The greatest and most famous of us all! Queen
Victoria!
My father-in-law and she had known each other many years, and at the
luncheon table he sat beside her and kept up a conversation with her.
She said very little, and with her eyes most often on her plate, like a
person who is polite, but distracted by illness, and incapable of
rousing the mind. The English Royal Family has the sensible habit of
dining without the ladies-in-waiting, who take their meals in another
room; so we were _en famille_; and the conversation was that of intimate
domestic interests and the little social happenings of the day. One
could hardly find a family more charming, more serene, more simply
happy.
And the explanation of this air of the English Court is easily found.
England is a country of accepted classes, of which each class makes no
infringement on the rights of the class above it and fears none from the
class below. There are even upper and lower servants in a household. And
each class receives servility from the class below it to reimburse it
for the servility that it pays to the class above. Royalty is just a
final upper class, neither envied by an aristocracy which cannot aspire
to it, nor feared by the lower classes over which it has no authority.
It is a social ornament of government, a symbol of national majesty.
The aristocracy is almost equally ornamental, with certain appearances
of power that are allowed it by the sufferance of the rest. The real
government is the commerce and industry of the nation. It is a
commercial empire, ruled by considerations of trade, but disguising
itself, even to itself, by forms of administration that are
aristocratic, with an established church in a nation largely
nonconformist, a military power that in the main engages in wars for the
extension or protection of commercial interests, and an ideal of empire
for humanitarian ends--at the same time making it pay. You will always
hear, for example, of the devoted self-sacrifice of the British rule in
India, which carries the peaceful blessings of civilisation to natives
incapable of self-government; but if India were being held at a
continual loss to the British tax-payer--if he had to pay out of his own
purse, without return, to protect the natives from their own
incapacity--I wonder whether the British Empire in India would last a
year. It is this faculty of almost honest self-deception which makes the
Englishman so insoluble a puzzle to the foreigner.
It makes the English Royal Family the most popularly revered in Europe,
even though it has, of all the royal families, the least governmental
power to compel awe, and has no English blood in it to endear it to the
nation, and is allowed not even a pretence of leadership in peace or war
to make it picturesque. When I attended Queen Victoria’s jubilee, about
a year after my first meeting with her, it seemed as if the whole nation
had poured itself into the streets of London to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of her succession to the throne. And if one were sceptical,
it might be said that they were only to come to enjoy the spectacle and
to rejoice in the display of their own national magnificence. But the
celebration had all the evidences of a personal tribute, and it was
undoubtedly so accepted by the Queen and her family.
King Edward, who was a man of the world not easily deceived, always
seemed to have this conviction of his importance in the eyes of his
people. I do not know to what extent he interested himself privately in
the problems of their government, from which the Royal Family is so
jealously excluded; certainly, in years of familiar acquaintance with
him, I never once heard him refer to them. Yet he was a man whose
intellect would have been of value to his country, for he was one of the
cleverest sovereigns of Europe, a striking personality, genial and
shrewd. It seemed a pity that such a brain should be wasted in the
idleness of royal life after it had succeeded in developing itself in
spite of the restrictions that make most royal brains so dull.
Coming first to England from the animations of the South, I thought the
people looked as stupefied as if they were all just recovering from a
fit; and I felt the same general blank of reserved dulness among the
aristocratic and official circles that surrounded the Court. It seemed a
country that was not ruled by intelligence but by property. Property is
a blind master, and great masses of the people were already rotted out
by a poverty and industrial oppression from which any governing
intelligence would have protected them. It took the fiasco of the Boer
War, and the strikes and internal disorders of the last few years, to
awaken the nation from its stupor of imperial complacency. Since that
time there has been a great appearance of revolt and reform; and I have
been interested to hear the foreign speculation on the probable fate of
the throne in the final issue of the upheaval. I should like to know
what power the British throne still has of which the country could
deprive it, or what liberty the people could acquire by its abolition!
They would gain as little as if, by a popular uprising, the citizens of
London killed the lions in their Zoo. There may have been a time when
lions were dangerous in England, but the sight of them in their cages
now can only give a pleasurable holiday-shudder of awe--of which, I
think, the nation will not willingly deprive itself.
There was then beginning the great industrial and commercial rivalry
between England and Germany that before war came led to so much talk of
it; and this rivalry was paralleled by an antipathy between the Kaiser
and King Edward that was as frank as the enmity between the nations.
Neither sovereign made any disguise of it even when they were together,
and I always felt that it did them both good--for a strong hostility is
often as potent as a strong affection to make character.
But let me leave the sovereigns for a moment and turn to the people. The
English impressed and baffled me in many ways. To the foreigner of Latin
blood and temperament, the English character indeed presents an almost
insoluble enigma. Often just when we feel that we are really beginning
to understand it, we are faced with some contradictory trait that
completely baffles us. Certainly when we saw the country, apparently
seething with internal dissensions, lay aside its family quarrels and
present a united front to the enemy, we realised more than ever what a
complex thing the English mentality is.
I must confess I thought that it would be hard for England to rise to
any great national emergency, not so much because things seemed to have
reached the breaking point in Ireland or because her colonies seemed
bound to her more by self-interest than by real loyalty, but on account
of the devastating habits of ease and luxury that had spread like a
disease among her aristocracy. But now we know that these corrupting
influences had not vitally affected the upper classes. Unlike the
extravagances of ancient Rome that had eaten to the heart of the
nation’s energies, England’s hurt was only skin-deep.
We can have no doubt of this when we see great ladies facing unfamiliar
hardships and risks at the battle front, others dismantling their huge
country houses and transforming them into hospitals and others freely
giving their whole time and activities to the great relief organisations
for the war’s sufferers. The English aristocracy’s ingrained sense of
responsibility to the nation remains untouched by all its latterly
acquired taste for luxury and over-indulgence in sports.
I say “latterly acquired,” because it is undoubtedly true that this love
of extravagance has grown enormously during the last decade or so. From
the pomp and lavishness displayed nowadays in certain smart
establishments, I should never realise that I was in the same circle
whose courtesy and simplicity used to delight me so in the England I
learned to love years ago.
It was, as I have said, as a young married woman that I had my first
experience of English life. The Comte and Comtesse de Paris, my
husband’s relatives, had been exiled from France and had been living for
some time in Tunbridge Wells. I spent many months with them there, and,
through their large circle of friends, I became acquainted with all
sorts and conditions of people, and soon found myself accepting the
hospitality of these newly-made friends. When I made it clear to my host
and hostess that I desired them to forget that I was an Infanta and to
be treated as an ordinary individual, etiquette was banished, and I was
able to do as I liked.
Life in the country houses always pleased me best. In those days it was
the custom for the family and guests to breakfast together, and I loved
the informality of it all undisturbed by the ministrations of liveried
lackeys. Often, when there were children in the house, they were allowed
to come to the table too, and we all had very jolly times over the
porridge.
We often went bicycling for the whole day, carrying our lunches with us
and eating them in some pleasant grove by the wayside. Sometimes we went
on coaching expeditions and lunched in some old thatch-covered inn. When
my children were little, I seldom missed passing some time in England
each summer, so that they too could enjoy the freedom of the open-air
life.
It did not take me long to appreciate the charm of the English home and
country, which are vastly different from anything abroad. In Spain,
people never live all the year round in the country if they can possibly
avoid it, and they seldom visit their estates unless they wish
practically to retire from the world. On the rare occasions when they do
snatch themselves from the conventional round of gaieties in the cities
or the big watering places, they shut themselves up in their big, bare
castles, receiving no one and seldom venturing outside their own
properties. It is almost a time of penance.
They are simply incapable of understanding the English love of life in
the open air, with its many exhilarating and ingenious pastimes which
appeal so strongly to me. More than that, they are inclined to look upon
such taste as rather ill-bred. For instance, only the humblest Spaniard
would dream of eating his cold lunch by the roadside, and I am sure that
the true aristocrat would never appreciate the charm of seeking out some
picturesque spot and having tea from a tea-basket. No Spanish lady of
quality would even allow herself to walk hatless in her own garden, and
reclining in a hammock or on the grass would be ruthlessly banned by her
traditions and upbringing.
One summer day Queen Cristina came to me with a look of sheer
consternation on her face.
“Eulalia,” she said, “I have just seen an appalling sight: an
Englishwoman lying on the grass in the park.”
The culprit was a lady-in-waiting, who had been brought to Spain by an
English princess visiting the Court. I had some difficulty in convincing
the Queen that such an action would not be considered such a shocking
breach of etiquette in England as she imagined.
In France, country life in the Smart Set is more animated than in Spain,
but it still lacks the spontaneity and freedom of the English
out-of-doors. The châteaux are occasionally thrown open to visitors, but
the guests are content to undergo the same routine as in Paris--the only
difference being that it is adapted to another setting. Of course, there
are hunting meets, and, of late years, garden parties, but much of the
entertaining takes place indoors--dinner-parties, theatrical
performances, afternoon receptions, etc. The French have not yet learned
how really to live in the country, to relax and to change their entire
mode of thought and activities.
There is hardly a county in England that I am not familiar with. I have
spent many weeks in Cornwall, Devon and Yorkshire, and have returned
again and again to Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and Richmond. Curiously
enough, during one visit to Richmond I received a message from the
Duchess of Teck that her daughter, then Princess of Wales, had just
given birth to her first boy. I went at once to White Lodge to offer my
congratulations, and I fancy that I was the first, outside the immediate
family, to hold the future Prince of Wales in my arms.
What to me is convincing proof of the change in latter years from
simplicity to lavish display is the difference in the way of living I
have remarked amongst many of my friends. Each time I have visited
England recently I have been struck with this.
One thing that used to delight me so was the informality of the English
tea. It was invariably served _sans cérémonie_ in the drawing-room.
After the servants had brought it in they retired and left us to our own
devices. Neighbours frequently dropped in without warning, and often, as
we gathered round a big blazing fire and ate those wonderful home-made
delicacies unknown to Continentals, there was a charming feeling of
expansiveness and intimacy that we never had at other times of the day.
Of late years I have noticed that the custom has
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
KING GEORGE V, THE LATE KING EDWARD VII AND THE PRINCE OF WALES]
changed. When you are invited to tea, you find your place set at a table
loaded with expensive flowers and accessories from the _chic_ caterer.
Footmen are in constant attendance and the charm of informality has
entirely gone.
Friends of mine who used to be content to dine in some simple tea-gown
now wear the latest Paris creations and their jewels--and this every
evening. Although the Frenchwoman may still think that the
Englishwoman’s taste in dress is far beneath her own standard, she would
have to admit, if she were invited to some fashionable house-party, that
the Englishwoman of means has far eclipsed her in the matter of frequent
change. She would see the hostess and guests appear in tweed suits and
stout boots for their morning constitutional and breakfast, then
reappear in white flannels for their afternoon game of tennis or
boating. She would wonder how, in the thick of sports and entertainment,
these energetic women found time to put on some clinging creation for
tea which would later be laid aside for the _décolleté_ dinner-gown.
Of course, these departures from the simple tastes of twenty years ago
seem harmless enough in themselves, but they are surely indications of
a constantly growing love of lavishness in the whole social routine. I
am sorry to say that the fine old-time courtesies of the English gentry
seem to have suffered by these more luxurious habits of living. In many
smart circles, polished manners seem to have become as super-annuated as
crinolines and stage coaches.
Whatever may be the faults of the English land-lord-system--faults
inherited from the centuries--the system used to work excellently
whenever the lord of the castle or manor-house lived up to his
responsibilities. In spite of its touch of paternalism, there was
something impressive about the white-haired earl inspecting his broad
acres, bowing tenants standing aside to let his carriage pass, and
something altogether touching about his lady visiting the cottagers, her
footman--far haughtier in mien than she--bearing gifts of food and warm
clothing. As long as the villagers were well cared for, I suppose they
never questioned whether it was right for their master to have a mansion
while they had to toil so hard to keep their humble thatched roof over
their heads. But when the young lord took to dissipating the family
fortunes on the turf, when he married some footlight favourite--in
other words, when he began to neglect the responsibilities of his
race--that, probably, was the beginning of their doubt in the justice of
the English social order. Then they forgot to curtsy whenever the young
lord and his bride motored through the village, and they began to listen
to the itinerant labour agitator at the tavern.
Of course, the democratic spirit that is spreading all over the world
has been at work in England for years, undermining rigid caste
distinctions and differences, but I feel that it could not have grown so
quickly nor expressed itself in just such forms as it has, if the
extravagance and irresponsibility of many of the rich and powerful had
not paved the way for it. Destroy respect and you destroy docility.
There is no doubt that the English lower classes, in their first efforts
toward democracy and equality, have made some pretty ludicrous mistakes.
Instead of copying the fine qualities of the aristocracy, they have,
more frequently than not, managed to imitate their shortcomings and
limitations. I remember hearing that the valet of some prince insisted
on having a valet for himself! I know that French maids, whom I have
taken to England, have had their heads turned by the amazing etiquette
of the servants’ hall--all unquestionably due to the servants’ desire to
pattern their masters.
The maid of the Infanta is a great person, and she soon found that she
could take precedence over all the others. She had to be elegantly
dressed. Indeed, whenever I go to England, I always remark that my maid
has double the luggage she requires when I take her to other countries.
Once I discovered that the English servants’ attitude toward their work
had so affected one maid that she was almost completely spoilt. For
instance, after a visit to England on which she had accompanied me, this
maid broke down and sobbed when I told her to light a fire.
“I can’t, I can’t,” she said, piteously, with tears streaming down her
face.
“But for years you have been accustomed to light fires for me,” I said.
“What has happened to make it such a terrible thing to light one now?”
She explained that she had learnt in England that it was beneath the
dignity of a lady’s-maid to do menial work.
A Spanish maid from Seville had more sense, and amused me immensely by
telling me that the English servants had told her that it was
exceedingly smart to walk out on Sunday afternoons with a soldier, and
they had added that if she desired to show herself with a Guardsman, he
would expect to be paid.
“Fancy my paying a soldier to walk out with me!” she said, laughing.
However, it is not unreasonable to hope that the war, which has already
done so much toward rousing the rich from their lethargy of extravagance
and neglect of responsibilities to the most praiseworthy usefulness,
will help correct the lower class conception of equality. As I have
already said, no character is so full of surprises as the English--so
capable of appearing to be one thing while underneath it is the exact
opposite. Can this be what people of other nationalities mean when they
speak of English hypocrisy? It is rather an innate reserve which the
foreigner finds great difficulty in penetrating. It comes, no doubt,
from the Englishman’s veneration for tradition, and for centuries he has
been schooled to show no emotion. That is often why he is supposed to be
either stupid or inattentive. As a matter of fact, this very exterior
gives him the great advantage of being able to size up a situation
without betraying either the process or his conclusions.
The proof of what I say is the Englishman’s unquestioned superiority in
diplomacy. People who have no experience of cosmopolitan society seem to
think that the successful diplomat must be a detective of the popular
novel type: an astute if somewhat unscrupulous politician and a polished
lady’s man all rolled into one. To be sure, the representatives of
certain countries often do their best to realise just such an ideal,
but, although this type may succeed in carrying some of their
machinations to a conclusion satisfactory to themselves, they almost
never accomplish anything really worth while for their governments. Most
of the English diplomats I have known on the Continent give the
impression of being serenely indifferent to any intrigues that may be
going on around them. It has often amused me to watch them at
dinner-parties. Unlike certain representatives of other powers, they
never go out of their way to make themselves agreeable to ladies. I have
never seen them pay special attention to the wives of powerful statesmen
for the purposes of their profession--indeed, they seem to scorn these
backdoor methods. Perhaps, it is because they know very well that real
diplomacy is built on more solid foundations than on the gleanings of
drawing-room conversations or the chance confidences of indiscreet
women.
And they are right in this, for the whole tradition of diplomacy in
England is different from that of any great power. She has not changed
her tactics for centuries.
England has established such a prestige among nations that she is able
to transact her international affairs in London, and has at her disposal
the brains of her best statesmen. King Edward, in bringing about the
_entente cordiale_, thus probably initiated the French Government into
this way of conducting its international affairs, for of late years
French diplomacy has steadily improved.
King Edward himself possessed in a high degree those national qualities
that make the English such good diplomats. Not only in the conduct of
nations, but in society, his self-possession and tact were unfailing.
They certainly did not fail him on one occasion when I saw him placed in
a very comical and embarrassing situation. We were both at a
dinner-party in a great London house, and among the guests was a lady
who bore an historic Italian title. She was English by birth, and before
her marriage had been famous in London society for her great beauty and
her charm of manner. A wealthy Jew, who shall be disguised under the
name of Abraham, was madly in love with her, and her friends, including
King Edward, saw his growing infatuation with concern.
“Don’t you marry that man,” was the advice given her, peremptorily but
good-naturedly, by King Edward.
But marry him she did; not, however, before he had been to Italy and
bought the palace and the pompous title of an impoverished Florentine
noble. Of this fact the king was unaware, and when the lady was
presented to him at the dinner-table as the Marchesa di X., he smiled
and said: “I am delighted to meet you again as the Marchesa di X., and
so thankful you didn’t marry that awful Abraham.”
A few moments later, the king observed that the “awful Abraham” was
standing close by and had heard the unfortunate remark. Without turning
a hair, he smiled at him and congratulated him heartily upon his
marriage.
King Edward was the first member of the English Royal Family that I met.
My acquaintance with him started in Madrid when, as Prince of Wales, he
came with his brother, the Duke of Connaught, one of the most charming
princes in Europe, to be present at the festivities given in honour of
the marriage of my brother.
Later I stayed with him and Queen Alexandra at Sandringham. One of the
first things to impress me there was the king’s extreme punctuality.
Somebody used always to come and warn me ten minutes before meal-times
that I must not keep him waiting. For some unknown reason, he had all
the clocks in the house set half-an-hour in advance of the right time,
and one of the first things that guests at Sandringham learnt was the
existence of this curious practice. The king liked to be amused, and, as
he had a taste for the Gallic turn of wit that makes Latin races such
good _raconteurs_, there were always one or two foreigners about who,
although they did not wear the cap and bells which would have defined
their functions in an earlier age, played the part of Court jester
admirably, and enlivened conversation at the dinner-table with
praiseworthy persistence.
The Princess Louise, now Duchess of Argyle, possesses a share of the
talent which distinguished her brother and their sister, the Empress
Frederick. I spent a very agreeable time with her in the Isle of Wight,
when I went to England for the first time. We had many cosy times
together, leaving our husbands to amuse each other, and our mutual
interest in art and literature naturally drew us together.
Undoubtedly, one of the cleverest and most charming figures in the royal
circle is the Duchess of Connaught. Her husband would, I am certain, be
the first to admit that his success in creating for himself the special
place he holds in English life and in the life of the British Empire is
largely due to the Duchess’s loyal help and wise advice. In spite of her
German upbringing, she has given herself wholeheartedly to the country
of her adoption, and her daughters, the Crown Princess of Sweden and
Princess Patricia, are delightful and typically English girls.
The Russian princess, known best in England as the Duchess of Edinburgh
and now Duchess of Coburg, was unable to adapt herself to life in a
strange country. It is a canon of Court etiquette that imperial
personages take precedence of royal personages, and consequently it was
held in Russia that the Duchess of Edinburgh, being the daughter of the
Emperor of Russia, should take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who
was merely the daughter of a king. Queen Alexandra is so amiable that I
believe that she would have contentedly allowed the duchess and anybody
else who wanted to do so to pass before her; but obviously the wife of
the heir to the throne could not be permitted to take any place but the
first after the Sovereign. What was to be done? Queen Victoria solved
the difficulty very cleverly. She caused herself to be proclaimed
Empress of India, and the claim put forward by the duchess immediately
fell to the ground. The assumption of imperial rank by the Queen was
undoubtedly dictated by political considerations, but the solution of
the difficulty, created by the conservatism of Court etiquette, was an
argument which weighed with her when she took the decisive step.
In no country is the veneration of royalty carried to greater lengths
than in England. That is doubtless why King Edward’s many American and
Jewish friends were so readily received by the smart set, although these
new-comers brought with them a love of lavishness and display that went
counter to the taste and tradition of the English _noblesse_. When
society opened its doors to these people of vast wealth and luxurious
habits, and accepted their prodigal entertainments, it is hardly
surprising that their example became infectious. Let us hope that
England’s ingrained respect for royalty will induce the aristocracy to
copy the simplicity and dignity of King George’s and Queen Mary’s life,
and that this influence will aid in completely reviving the old-time
ideals of courtesy and good-breeding.
As I have already said, this revival has already begun. The war, which
has had the effect of rousing the rich from their over-indulgence in
luxury and sports, will no doubt do much toward leavening the attitude
of the classes toward each other. Surely, since they have been drawn
together in a spontaneous movement of patriotism in the face of the
enemy, they will lose much of their common mistrust and misunderstanding
and the real democracy of the spirit--not the sham equality of
externals--will have freer leeway. More than that, I dare hope that the
war, which has not only forced different classes but different nations
to stand side by side, will break down their insular habit of thought
which sees no good in foreign life and customs.